Let me tell you something. When you're an avid reader and have a great collection of books, moving is a major pain in the ass. I'm now into well over fifty boxes of books, with more to go. The locker at my new apartment is filled to the brim with boxes full of novels.

Anyway, while packing away those books a few days back, I came across my Roger Taylor books. The man is a British fantasy author whose novels used to be published by Headline during the late 80s and early 90s. The books sported very nice covers, and I was a big fan of the author for many years. Sadly, Roger Taylor completely disappeared in the late 90s.

Does anyone know what happened to him? I don't believe he was ever published in the USA, but his novels were widely available in the UK and the Commonwealth. Anybody else have fond memories of Taylor's books? Now that I've discovered that his novels are available in eBook and paperback formats from Mushroom eBooks, I might give some of them another go to see if they have aged well.

Here's a list of Roger Taylor's novels, including links to extracts for each work:

OMG! The Call of the Sword's cover was cropped to become the cover to Summoning's Minas Morgul CD, from 1995! What a weird thing to recognize, I know, but I had always assumed the image on the CD came from some Middle Earth-related product, since Summoning's music is ambient Black Metal with lyrics and themes taken from Tolkien's works. I'm a huge Summoning fan, fwiw.

I remember the books and their lovely covers. I know I had at least the first one, but I've got a feeling I didn't finish it for some reason. All the same, I'm very tempted to go and check out those ebooks. (I need more books like I need a hole in the head right now, but that probably won't stop me.)

I made similar inquiries elsewhere about Michael Scott Rohan, another author who 'disappeared'. A few weeks later the man himself responded, telling us he retired from the rat race of publishing and to look after his health. Maybe it's a similar case here, just grew tired of the whole thing and decided it was enough.

I picked these up in my local library about 17 years ago and I remember loving them at the time but I remember nothing about them except maybe a bird name Gavor. Will have to try and hunt them down. Great find!!

Hi. Just came across your page. My thanks to everyone for the kind words. 'The Return of the Sword' effectively rounded off the previous eleven books and also coincided with other things happening in my life and with Headline changing from being a smallish publisher to being a mega book selling company interested only in 'dead certs'. Fortunately Mushroom took up the books so they are alive and well, and they (mushroom) are about to publish 'The Keep'. It's another fantasy, but nothing like the others, and, to be honest, rather strange. I've also now got my book 'Aikido - more than a martial art' out in a Kindle version. *That* was an interesting experience,